A380 cruise speed

[LH201]

Hello,

first I have to say that the PA A380 is awesome!

I read on the forums, that the typical cruise speed is Mach 0.85...During cruise I can only achieve Mach 0.82

Is there a way to speed up?

[GaryG]

Less weight?

[LH201]

With 'less weight' do you mean less fuel or less payload?

I just had 17% fuel on board...I think that makes the aircraft much lighter than fully loaded.

[LH201]

I just lowered the payload to 0 and set fuel to 10%...I just can't get past Mach 0.82.

Any ideas?

[esg]

The Mach number is inversely proportional to the outside air temperature; ergo, the higher up you go, the higher the Mach number will be for a given (indicated) airspeed.

[LH201]

I know what you mean, but does this explain why I can't reach Mach 0.85 and fly 'overspeed'?

With other big planes such as the PMDG 747 or MD-11, thats no problem...

[esg]

Under the same meteorological conditions?

I've no idea how VAS goes about calculating VMAX (the barber's pole); it might have something to do with that.


Why aren't you using the standard pressure setting, by the way?

[LH201]

Not the same conditions, but I never had that problem...I also now think that it has to do with VAS and their vmax calculation.

I wasn't on STD because I did a test flight to reproduce the problem and snap a screenshot...I just forgot to switch to STD.

[esg]

Oh, ok. I just thought they might've thrown the baro pressure in their calculation, though unlikely.